Page 9 of Drowning Erin

And suddenly I’m remembering another time like this. Where one minute we were bickering, just as we are now, and the next his mouth was on mine and his hands were inside my shirt.

I’m not scared, I realize. I’m excited.

I hate, as always, that Brendan is capable of eliciting any feeling from me. Especially that one.

* * *

The night finally ends. We say our goodbyes and are almost to our car when Rob runs into Brad, a colleague of his, in the parking lot. I’m exhausted and in a pissy mood, but I try not to let it show as he approaches. There are certain roles we all play on behalf of our significant others, and this is mine—the pleasant fiancé/wife, who smiles at the correct times and dresses appropriately and is otherwise irrelevant. I’ve known most of these guys for years and I’m guessing not a single one of them knows what I do for a living.

He hugs me and then punches Rob’s shoulder. “That was a crazy night last week, huh?”

Rob laughs, but it’s a little forced, and his eyes flicker to me for a moment. “Yeah. Insane.”

“How late did you guys stay?” Brad asks.

“Not long,” Rob replies. Under normal circumstances I probably would have tuned this conversation out by now, but there is something about Rob that has me on alert. His posture, his voice—they strive for normalcy but don’t quite achieve it.

“Seriously? Because I left around 10 and it looked like you were going strong. I just can’t stay out like that anymore.”

Rob smiles. “The key is to order club soda with lime most of the night so it just looks like you’re drinking.”

Brad laughs. “Someone ought to clue Christina into that trick, because she was plastered.”

Mic drop.

Christina? He was out with Christina last week?

I am not, by nature, jealous. But Christina was the cause of the biggest fight we’ve ever had, and given that we almost never fight, that makes it especially memorable. I’ve seen her hit on Rob before, but it was at last year’s holiday party that I finally lost it. I was standing unseen a few feet away when she unbuttoned her shirt and asked if he was ready for a change of scenery. He didn’t pursue it, but the words no and I’m engaged never left his mouth either. Instead he’d laughed and told her he was sure the view was magnificent. We had a major fight over it on the way home that night, and I suspect we may be about to have another right now.

I walk into the parking lot as fast as is possible in a pencil skirt and heels, my heart drumming fast in my chest.

“Erin,” Rob says from behind me.

I round on him. “When?” I demand. “When exactly did this magical night with Christina take place?”

He groans. “She’s the head of M&A, hon. It’s not like it was a date.”

“When?”

“Last week,” he says. “The client thing.”

My head is spinning. He told me he was going to cut out early that night. I made him braised short ribs and mashed potatoes and I’d actually felt sorry for him when he said he was stuck with clients. “So Christina was the reason,” I hiss, “that I wasted two hours cooking a dinner you didn’t bother to come home for.”

“Of course she wasn’t!” He doesn’t shout, but his voice is raised, something that rarely happens with Rob. “There were like 10 people there, half of them clients, and there was no way I could extract myself.”

My laugh is bitter. “Just like there was no way you could tell her you were engaged when she hit on you last winter.”

He digs his hands through his hair. “She already knows I’m engaged. We’ve gone over this. She says crazy shit that she doesn’t mean when she’s drinking and the best way to handle it is to laugh and move on. I have to work with her. Do you understand how awkward it would be for everyone if I made a big deal of it every time she said something inappropriate?”

“No. What I understand is that you blew me off last week and instead stayed out until after midnight with a woman we’ve already had one major fight over.”

“I don’t always get to decide when I’m going out or who it’s with,” he argues. “And I’m very well-compensated for that fact. You have to live with the downside sometimes if you want the upside too.”

We ride home in silence. I know there’s a point to what he said, but I’m still angry, and it’s so unusual for me to be angry at Rob that neither of us is even sure how to proceed. Olivia thinks the fact that we rarely argue is a bad thing. She says it means we never dive below the surface with each other. Perhaps she’s right, but I’m okay with that. Things under my surface are dark, much darker than Rob—with his storybook childhood and perfect parents—could ever understand. I like the fact that when Rob sees me, he sees the girl I might have been instead of the one I actually am.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he says with a sigh as we walk in the house. “We finally have some time to ourselves. Can we please put it behind us?”

His arms go around me, and I press my face to his chest, though all I can smell is the starch of his shirt. His hands slide from my waist to my ass. “Let’s go to bed.”